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Tuesday, 12 June 2012

Ta-dah! Tuesday - Badge Heart Art

This is another idea I've had languishing in a folder for ages - before the invention of Pinterest even (shock horror!) but have had to be slowly gathering supplies for. I have no idea if Brigitte Herod was the first to make one of these pictures with retro badges - that would be like establishing who got in first with the scrabble tiles idea - but her badge heart at Rockett St George was the first one I found.

Who doesn't feel a pang of nostalgia for their childhood when they see all the brightly coloured badges - I know I had quite a collection from places we'd visited when I was a kid, but sadly when I found them a few years ago most of them had gone rusty. However, I bet you don't feel enough of a pang to pay £175 for one of these pictures! When I checked the Rockett St George website yesterday, they had stopped selling the small version, but they did have an enormous 120cm square canvas version - only £1,500! Want to see?

Despite the sad loss of my World Wildlife Fund and Walkers crisps badges from my youth, I did still have quite a few badges knocking around, as some years ago I made my own version of a Topshop bag (er, with badges on) and I just dug it out of the back of a cupboard. The few extra I needed came as part of a job lot from eBay, and I also found some I'd got with NME years ago. If you don't still have your childhood collection, you quite often see baskets of old band pins to rummage through at boot sales, market stalls and sometimes vintage shops. Children's birthday cards are another fertile source - how many 'I am 4' badges does one kid need anyway?

I forgot to take a before photo, but I'd bought a nasty Next Homes type picture from a charity shop - a pine box frame with some uninspiring dead twigs and skeleton leaves in. Ripping out the foliage tore the back cardboard, so I covered it with some turquoise wrapping paper (£1 from Paperchase) and painted the frame white. I arranged the badges as well as I could and then hot glued them in place one at a time. If the back of the badge was very deep, I added a bit of blue-tack before glueing over it. If you don't want the picture to be permanent, you could probably just use more blue-tack and skip the glue altogether.

My version. For not £175

I think these are easier to do if you have a selection of different sized badges, I had a few larger ones but mostly they are the typical small button size. Having a variety would make it easier to fill in any gaps, but I don't think it came out too badly. Not quite as good as the £175 version, but a lot cheaper!

So, what have you been up to? I'd love you to link up your latest ta-dah! posts. Please link back here so others can join in.

I love this.... but no badges. I threw them out years ago :( Could kick myself now! I have finally linked my blanket Tahdah back to your Tahdah Tuesday..... its only taken me four weeks, I did not know if my latest Tahdah post of DIY would be ok to add, so its the blanket xxx

That is a brilliant idea and i have to say yours is just as good as those expensive ones. Why pay more when you can do it just as good as yourself ;-)) Im going to try link up with you today never done it before but i will work it out ;-)) dee xx

What a brilliant idea! My girls have lots of Birthday badges that I didn't know what to do with - I do now! I still have the badges I collected in the 80's including one with Kylie and Jason on and another with Bros - don't think they deserve wall space though! :o)

Your version is brilliant Lakota - I love it!!! I think the blue paper really adds to the look and your badges are ace. Alas, I don't have any badges but I am tempted to try this with good ol' buttons!!

I love this - I wish i'd of known about doing something like this when I still have my huge quality street tin filled with pins that my cousin had passed on to me because she was bored with them. Shame I passed them on to the charity shop!

So annoyed with myself - I used to have a brilliant collection of badges, but they ended up in a box and then I think the box ended up in a bin... I love your clever, creative ideas - really inspiring. My mission now is to come up with a Ta-dah! of my own x

Fantastic and handmade to boot. Why would anyone pay all that for a picture made from badges, why... why...?Your's is equally as gorgeous and original. Perhaps you should try flogging them, mrs! I like these Ta-Dah Tuesdays, they make me get my a--e in gear to finish stuff! Your poor boy! Chicken pox is rotten. I feel for you too, having to try to stop him scratching himself silly.Hope he's soon better.xx

What a fab idea! I distinctly remember going through a phase of adding as many offensive bands and smutty slogan badges to my schoolbag as I could get away with. Needless to say, many were confiscated! I love how personal these can be, especially if you've amassed a collection over many years, yours looks great :) xxx

This is genius!! What a wonderful way to exhibit childhood mementos that would otherwise be extradited to charity shops etc! We used to have a HUGE badge box when I was a kid- I wish I still had it- I'd totally do this! Beautiful idea!!!

I would take your version over the MASSIVE EXPENSIVE one any day. *Sheesh* people must have alot of cash to burn if they would spend that much hard earned money on a bunch of framed buttons. Now I can see if the buttons were from like the 1900's to the 1930s or something... but that does not seem like the case.I think this idea is fun and makes a cute piece of art. There is baskets of buttons at all the thrifts I visit and they are usually priced at .25 -.50 cents a button. I will have to keep a eye out for ones I like and give this craft a try.

what a fab idea, have always wondered what to do with the masses of birthday badges I seem to be accumulating (along with all the other sentimental crap I accumulate..waaah!) Will definately give it a go...need to get me some 80's badges though..wish I still had my AHA one... :(

Aww that's such a cute idea! Love your finished product - way better than the madly overpriced version! I don't think I've got any badges other than my golly collection though and they're not the right shape (also probably madly un-PC now).

I like the idea of saving £175 pounds on one of those! I had a huge badge collection as a kid, but I think they all got thrown out when I left home! A great way to display a collection - I feel inspiration creeping up!

I made one of these too, great minds eh? Here is my effort... http://makedomum1.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/badge-of-honour.html I can't believe you have a 'Welcome to Croydon' badge too!! Mine is there just above 'I heart ET' :D

I love love love this idea and I am in the process of doing a budget house makeover o my blog and I woundered if icould use your photo and a little bit of your tutorial on my Family-Budgeting.co.uk blog with ful links back to you . Pls let me know at becky@family-budgeting.co.uk

About Me

Cake, booze, sweets. American TV boxsets. Decaf. Words, words, words. Buying coats and forgetting I need outfits to go underneath. Stationery. Nail varnish. Pop culture dissector, kitchen dancer, charity shopper. Lazy perfectionist. Prone to inappropriate crushes on fictional characters. Long time rocker, reformed raver. I also like French rap and turning the bass in my car up as loud as it will go. Big believer in birthdays. My weapons of choice are sarcasm and the gluegun.